The invention relates to means for transporting and dispensing plastic container bags and, more particularly, to means for transporting and dispensing reclosable zipper-lock plastic bags in the form of a chain to be fed through an automatic machine for loading zipper-lock type plastic bags.
Reclosable zipper lock plastic bags are formed of flexible thin plastic film and have closed bottom and side edges and a reclosable upper end mouth. Running fully across opposed inner facing surfaces of the mouth are a pair of cooperatively interlocking fastener strip profiles formed with respective engageable rib and groove elements made of extruded plastic material. The specific nature of manufacture and handling of reclosable plastic bags of this nature is more fully disclosed, for example, in U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,198,228, 3,291,177, 3,338,284, and 3,340,116. Reclosable zipper lock plastic bags are typically closed at their mouth ends during the manufacture process in order to allow proper interfitting of the rib and groove members and exit the manufacturing site in that closed condition. The fastener strip profiles may be either integrally extruded with the plastic film or subsequently attached to interior film surfaces in a later step.
Heretofore, the loading of zipper lock plastic bags has not been found conducive to an automated machine process. It has been necessary to provide manual loading of such reclosable plastic bags on an individual basis, which is very expensive in terms of labor costs and requires much time since the loader must first manually open the initially closed bag, deposit fill material into the bag, manually interlock the bag mouth fastener strips, and finally transfer the loaded bag to a packaging station. Individual loading may also take place through an open bottom edge of each bag after which the bottom edge is heat sealed.
Recently, however, automatic machinery has been devised for feeding, opening, loading, and reclosing zipper lock plastic bags which conducts a series of interconnected bags along a travel path between work stations in the machine. Details of this automatic filling machine are set forth in the commonly assigned applications referred to above.
The present invention is directed to an arrangement for the construction and dispensing of a serially connected chain of reclosable plastic bags which is conducive for being continuously fed into and through an automatic machine for the sequential loading of the bags.